How to Sell Your Screenplay Pt. 3: How To Find The Right Producer

How to Sell Your Screenplay Part 3: How To Find The Right Producer

Okay, it's time to get to the nitty gritty. How do you get to producers? And even more importantly, how do you know which producers to get to? 

Well, that's what we're going to be talking about in Part 3 of the How to Sell Your Screenplay series.

Before I jump in today, a shout out. Much of the information that I'm giving you today was developed by a wonderful acting teacher, John Dapolito.  If you're an actor, you should check him out. He has some brilliant ideas about how to brand actors and how to use theme to find the roles that actors should play, the people most likely to cast them, and the projects they're most likely to get cast in. 

Today I’m going to build upon John's work, and show you how you can adapt it for your work as a screenwriter.

When we think about selling a screenplay, it’s very rare that anyone tells us to consider the theme.

Selling a screenplay, that’s business, right? Shouldn’t we be talking about four quadrant finance kind of stuff? Isn't that all about numbers and what's hot right now? 

It’s easy to overlook the touchy feely emotional part of selling a screenplay. 

But having been on both sides of this picture, having been both a writer and a producer, I can tell you that the decision to buy a screenplay is rarely a rational decision.

The decision to invest years of your life into bringing something to the big or the small screen. That's not a pure numbers decision. That's an emotional decision. 

I'm not saying the producers don't have numbers in their heads. I'm not saying producers don't have mandates from their bosses or their CEOs. I'm not saying that there aren't business concerns involved in the decision. As we talked about in episode one of this How To Sell Your Screenplay series, that's why it takes some luck to sell a script.

So sure, everyone’s got business concerns. What's hot right now for this particular producer is always going to factor into any decision. How that lines up with your scripts: that's the part you can't control. 

But when you’re a producer contemplating two scripts that both fulfill your business needs, which one do you buy? Which one do you fight for? Which one makes you want to dive in?

That's an emotional decision. 

There's a really simple reason for this: There is no rational reason to spend a million dollars on a script.

Or 10 million dollars, 100 million dollars… 

Most likely, if you had 100 million bucks in your bank account, you wouldn't be thinking, “you know what, let me take all that cash and let me put it into something that very well might not make the money back.” Right?

This is the Hollywood business model: we are going to lose money on five movies, sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars. But then on the sixth movie, we're going to make so much money that it makes all that money back and more. 

This is not a traditional business.This isn't: “we’ve found a niche in auto tires that isn't filled right now. And a brand new kind of tire everyone wants.”

The finance model for films and TV, whether it’s an indie movie or a huge Hollywood production, is a gambling model. 

And since no one ever knows for sure which movie will turn into a blockbuster, Producers have business plans, but they make emotional decisions. 

Producers, directors, agents, managers and stars are attracted to very specific scripts. And the same people aren't attracted to every script.